The Higher Education Coordinating Board's General Academic Institutions, Technical and State Colleges Formal Advisory Committee met virtually and approved the Oct. 30 meeting minutes before reviewing subcommittee work and setting a schedule to finalize recommendations.

Emily Eudorf, a subcommittee chair, told members a draft of Charge 1 recommendations for general academic institutions was circulated and that "nothing's changed about the recommendations themselves, but trying to pay attention to the narrative and how we're framing it." She asked the committee to review the wording and said the performance-based funding group should consider these recommendations when preparing their full funding proposal.

Daniel Harper, reporting for the group that reviewed facility data (work group 4), said the external assessor Gordian told the committee that the "age of the building in and of itself, does not have a direct correlation to the cost of maintaining the facility," and that technical complexity is a stronger driver of cost. Based on that assessment, the group recommended no additional data collection related to building age for the HEAF model at this time.

Members discussed how that finding relates to HEAF and infrastructure formulas; Daniel and others clarified the committee's charge for this item was to identify additional data elements, not to change HEAF or infrastructure funding formulas. The recommendation is therefore procedural—maintain current data collection—and does not propose formula changes.

The committee also considered language additions requested by Lamar State Colleges to update critical-demand fields for state colleges and discussed a request to add a bill pattern for Texas State Technical College's New Braunfels campus (opened in 2023; the campus graduated its first cohort in May 2025 and enrolled about 165 students for the fall term). Committee members agreed to incorporate both items into the subcommittee draft.

On timing, committee members agreed to circulate subcommittee drafts around Dec. 12–15, return feedback in early January (target Jan. 6), and have a full committee draft available the week of Jan. 12. The meeting on Jan. 22 was left on the calendar as a virtual option to approve the report if email review does not resolve outstanding edits.

Procedural actions at the meeting included a motion to approve the Oct. 30 minutes (motion made by Jeff and seconded by Jason; the ayes were called and the motion passed) and a motion to adjourn (moved by Sherry and seconded), after which the committee adjourned at 01:30.

The subcommittees will finalize language and submit drafts to staff for assembly; staff (Jennifer Gonzales) said she will assemble the combined material in early January for committee review.